Head along to London's Design Museum and you'll find a remarkable shoe on display until August. Called the Melonia Shoe, it’s perhaps not what most Reg Hardware readers would wear, but it is remarkable, not so much for the design, but because it was printed by Belgian product prototyping company Materialise and Sweden-based …

subtractive vs additive tech

My dentist tried this for a time, but has gone back to making a 3d model of the stump with a scanner/camera but sending off for the crowns. So it's back to a 2-treatment system for them. I never bothered to ask why they stopped, it may be cost.. or it may be that having longer to prepare the replacements results in a better prognosis.

Please note, however, that this is a subtractive process, starting from preprepared blanks and removing material. 3d printing (as per this article) is additive.

Food

3D printing inconjunction with Kinect

Utilising this with the equally cheap and accessible 3d scanner that is Kinect, I'd guess replication of a lot of different, simple, household objects could be achieved. Or of course, scan your own foot, and use that as a digital mould for your own printed shoes. Etc etc.

Next wave of copyright hoo ha...

http://www.shapeways.com/ is a pretty neat idea - you can put your models in a gallery for other people to print and they also offer a full colour ceramic-ish printing. Reasonably priced too if you are making hollow models.

Looking forward to desktop models with built in laser scanners being as cheap as colour laser printers. Parts photocopying will bring with it loads more industries complaining about copyright... sit back and enjoy the fun!

@Ilsa

Surely...

RepRap

That's partly what RepRap is about (and indeed what the 'Rep' in the name stands for). It can print all its own plastic parts, and has also been used in the creation of some PCBs, though of course things like the motors are a bit tricky.

Dear god no....

this is news?!?

Jay Leno (American comedian/talk show host) had a feature on this several years ago. He is an avid collector of classic cars, one of which is an ancient steamer. He needed to replace a part for which there is no longer any replacement available. Rather than pay exorbitant sums for a custom piece made using traditional methods, he went to a local shop that had a 3d scan/print device. The old part was scanned by the computer, then the printer spit out the part within a few minutes. Granted the part was plastic and would be used for the purpose of making a proper casting mold, but it was an exact replica that fit perfectly.

Video of this bit, which was shown on his TV series, is available from the usual sources. The most interesting bit for me was at the end when they "printed" an adjustable spanner - complete with the proper moving parts.

But what if...

Other Uses

It wasn't mentioned in the article, but one of the main advantages of the technology is its ability to produce parts that can't be made by traditional means, one of the best examples I've seen was a transparent castle tower, complete with spiral staircase but formed out of a single piece of material. Novelty items aside it opens the door to producing items that, until now were impossible to make.

3D printing with paper

BTW f1 teams are meant to be using this for their gears

At first it was plastic cores for lost wax casting but progressed to laser sintering of metal gears.

Note this was some years ago. It should either be common practice or abandoned.

One thing that surprised me on seeing my first stereo lithography part was that it could make cylindrical parts at right angles to the direction of *travel* of the head which were pretty smooth. I'd expected to see grains like expanded polystyrene, but nothing was visible.

There was also a British Gas project to make fuel cells using a modified ink jet printer (as specialist gear did not even exist at that time).

Key challenges seem to surface finish and the ability to manufacture "power" components IE conductive/strong enough to handle the prime mover or the forces their operation will generate (the F1 gears *transmit* forces, are axisymentric and operate in compression)

A subset of this is the apparently limited ability to do semiconductors, which are obviously a key part of integrating more control components into a finished system-in-a-part.

I think people may be focusing on these systems as a *total* solution to making a part instead of a key part of a "think making" system.

While delivering a part that performs multiple functions can be *very* satisfying a design of multiple parts (possibly all made together) processed and assembled *after* manufacture may deliver a faster solution (which maybe *the* critical parameter for some people).

Not smooth enough?

Consider electro-polishing or "Liquid honing"

Too tough to release part from support?

Consider adding perforations around it to cut the part out with a saw, etching or electrochemical machining? Or build in flexures so most of the block is part and not filler (so less filler to strip) and then fold over the relevant joints to give the component. Consistent, reliable flexure design is considered *very* tricky so not for the feint hearted.

It is *highly* unlikely this will ever be a mass production technology but for short run (or *unique*) mfg purposes this is still near the *start* of the art. Your own unique laptop//iphone/mp3 case? Protective sports equipment that fits you like it was hand made?

In 1997 John Woo opened Face/Off with a color matched ear being built in a tank using stereo lithography.

If we can't do *all* of that by now (I'm guessing color is likely to be the problem) then the next research project already exists. Temporary (convincing) prostheses which fit *properly* should absolutely be a target application for this.

Tea.

3D printing of concrete.

I've seen that one. Ok, the nozzle in the printer head wasn't exactly small, but nonetheless, the wall was seamless. Bonus for all the cuts and voids that would be soon filled with piping, wires, etc... avoiding to break the thing after built.

In fact, the equipment is the same used in shotcrete, except there was an encoder and drives guiding where the nozzle should spit the concrete.

The Diamond Age

Anyone else read William Gibson's The Diamond Age? I remember thinking when I first met a 3D printed object in 2001 (a spanner) that it sounded just like the first generation of machine that would end up as the "matter compiler" of Gibson's 1995 book...

I know these things take time, but most of the stuff given as examples here doesn't seem terribly far advanced over the parts I met 10 years ago, and it was obviously not new technology then sitting, as the spanner was, in a post-grad's desk drawer up (near) Sheffield...